Mr Farage, who appeared tanned and tired, dismissed any claims of impropriety, insisting that he was only holding her hand because she was disabled and that he “haven’t even got her phone number”.

He said: “The next time I see a disabled person I am just ignoring them. She is a seriously disabled woman on a crutch and I actually helped her by carrying her bag.

“It [the allegations] are just fluff and nonsense. She is a disabled woman who I helped back to the hotel.”

Asked if he had gone to her room, he said: “End of conversation.”

In a column for the Independent, Mr Farage described it as a “disgraceful front page “story”” and accused the Mirror of being in alliance with “assorted left wing extremists promoting negativity against Ukip having failed to stop us succeed in the recent elections.”

He continued: “Being blonde and talking to me without taking to Twitter to slag me off made her, in the eyes of that paper, an acceptable target for intrusion.

“Naturally for a paper in alliance with the Labour Party - who have finally woken up to not owning the working class vote - this must mean something sordid.

“These days just standing next to me seems to make people permitted targets for photographs and an embellished scandal. I doubt I could take my children to school on a rare day off without being accused of something sinister.”

He pointed out that Helen Grant, the sports minister who he mistakenly described as a Cabinet Minister, Lord Adonis, the Transport Secretary, and Mary Portas had all attended the same conference but were not “splashed on the front pages accused of luxury living instead of being back in Blighty in the rain”.

Mr Farage said: “I guess it’s because she isn’t the leader of Ukip but an Establishment politician who fits in nicely with the cosy club of lobbying groups and media organisations who crowd around Westminster.”